Robert Forster's
career started on a high note with such films as "Reflections in a Golden
Eye" and "Medium Cool". He then moved to television with starring
roles on “Banyon” and “Nakia”. For some reason his career
stalled but he continued to work in exploitation films like “Alligator”
and “Maniac Cop 3”. Thankfully because of this, Quentin Tarantino
sought him out for a role in his follow-up to “Pulp Fiction”, “Jackie
Brown”. It was his 1997 performance as Max Cherry that earned him his first
Oscar nomination and helped put him back on the Hollywood map, so to speak. Again
in 2001, he gained critical attention with his role as Eddie in “Diamond
Men”. It’s in this role, more than any other in his career, that’s
shows more of Forster’s ability than ever before.

A fascinating person with a commanding presence, DVDTalk writer Phillip Duncan
had the chance to talk with Forster about “Diamond Men”, his career
and the his various side projects.

How did you become involved with Diamond Men?

During the year after Jackie Brown, I got a lot of offers for a lot of stuff
and some of it actually paid and some of it didn’t. We tried to slot in
everything we could, because you know what? I figured I don’t know how
long this warm streak will last so I might as well slug it out as frequently
as possible. During that year, or about the year after, I ran into Jim Carrey,
who asked me to do a part in Me, Myself and Irene. While I was doing the picture,
I had heard from these guys at Diamond Men a couple of times. They couldn’t
quite find a break in my schedule to put it in and they said how about now.

So, after I worked a stretch on Me, Myself and Irene I went to Pennsylvania
and shot a week of Diamond Men. Then I went back and finished Me, Myself and
Irene and then came back to Los Angeles and shot two more weeks on Diamond Men.
So we slotted it in between actual paying jobs and wouldn’t you know it,
this little picture has made a lot more noise for me than a lot of other things,
including Me, Myself and Irene.
Listen to the response...

How did Diamond Men differ from some of the other productions you’ve
worked on?

It was tiny and
concentrated. This picture was originally scheduled for 20 days, which is not
much of a schedule. I was so worried that we would not finish the picture that
when we shot that week in Pennsylvania we went like barbarians. We shot a lot
of stuff, so that when we got back to LA, we had shot so much stuff in Pennsylvania
that we came in two days early in LA. The opportunity for getting in there and
slugging out the work is greater when you have a small company and a small group
and small group of actors. Basically it was Donnie (Wahlberg) and me and Bess
and Jasmine and a couple of others. There are very few characters in the picture
and we were, everybody was really tight, we showed up every morning ready to
go and were working out scenes all day long, jumping in and shooting them and
moving on to the next. It’s not something you can do when you have a bigger
company and egos and everything. Everything is bigger on a bigger picture. Everything
slows things down. What! We don’t have the gold doorknobs! Quick, call
New York and get them flown out here and so forth. With a little picture like
Diamond Men, if you don’t have the gold doorknobs you don’t worry
about them, you keep on shooting.
Listen to the response...

I noticed you seemed to have a good chemistry with Donnie Wahlberg.

Donnie is great. I can’t tell you anybody I’ve ever worked with
that I enjoyed more or that I thought picked up his end of the log as well as
Donnie Wahlberg. He hasn’t gotten a lot of praise for this movie. Everybody
likes him and all that, but I’ve been getting a lot more of the plusses
than Donnie. I can promise you that it takes two guys to carry the log, not
just one.

Definitely. When you have strong performance on one end, you have to
have it on the other…

You have to have it on the other and Donnie doesn’t get as much credit
as he is due, but he was great. I’ve never worked with anybody I’ve
like better.
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A lot of your roles seem similar in many ways, is that a conscious
choice or not?

In the old days, there were two kinds of actors, maybe more. They were the
kind of actors that you liked them for who they were and they were themselves
in each movie. I’m thinking of Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stweart, and Gregory
Peck. There was a quality of the human being that really filled the role. Then
there are actors that take roles that are very, very different from themselves.
That’s another way to be an actor. I always remind young actors that if
they want to be a star in this business, likely they have got to bring something
to the screen that the audience admires in them and that’s still true.
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Do you research your roles? Did you for this one?

We took a week’s rehearsal prior to doing the picture. We got together
on a couple of occasions, Donnie and me and the director. He showed us a diamond
cutting room. He showed us grades of diamonds and we handled them. We weighed
them and used the little tweezers and so forth. So we were a little bit adept
by the time we got there.
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Do you think those experiences helped him this, his first feature film?

Oh sure. He knew his subject matter. That’s something they tell young
writers. Write about something you know. He wrote about something he knew well
and it transferred to the screen.
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While doing research on you I found on your website that you also do
motivational speaking. How did that come about?

You know Phillip, I wasn’t working. I was getting less and less work
and I figured “Bob, your life is not over. Your creative life isn’t
over and you better think up something to do, a way to express yourself.”

So I put together this little speaking program. First I started talking to
actors. I opened that little actor’s workshop. I told actors to look for
one where they work every single time, because it’s not that hard. Kids
can do it; I can do it. How hard could it be, but you have to do it, and do
it and do it. That’s where you figure it out. I said to the class should
be one where you work every single time and it should be cheap. If it’s
not cheap, somebody’s got their hand in your pocket and will keep you
in that class forever.

So I opened
that class and after doing for about a year I realized that some of the things
I had to say to actors had broader applications. So I put together a little
menu. They’re all short items, 3, 4, 5-minutes long. They are the lessons
of my life, universal lessons--Respect, Responsibility, Deliver Excellence Right
Now, Never Quit—and all with decent stories and punch lines and they’re
all short. I put together this little menu and I put an ad in a paper called
Speakers for Free, the ad was not free, by the way. It was expensive for me
at the time. I started getting calls from people who wanted me to speak. The
first call I got was from a halfway house in downtown LA for white-collar criminals.
The sergeant asked if I would speak to the guys and I said sure. When I got
to the place and had my little menu in my hand—which probably only had
15 items at the time, now it’s got twice that many. These are all little
stories.

As I approached the joint I didn’t pull into the parking lot. I suddenly
got scared. I said to myself, “Oh god, why did I say yes to this? What
have you got to say to these guys.” I drove around the block and I didn’t
turn in again and I thought, “Oh geez Bob, are you scared? Are you going
to lose your nerve? Just go in there. But what have you got to say to these
guys, really? Why did you say yes to this?”

Then I had a moment of calm and I said, “just tell them the truth Bob.”
I pulled in the parking lot, I handed out my menu and I started talking and
the hour went like Bam! (snaps fingers) like that and the hour was gone in seconds.
That’s when I realized “OK, you do have something to say, these
guys were attentive and let’s keep on doing this. If in another 50 of
these, you’re not any good, you’d better quit.”

By the time I had done 50 of them I had a much longer menu and I was better
at it and I’ve done it successfully and warmly for some years now and
I still speak free. If you want to publicize my website, it’s RobertForster.com.
That’s how I get booked. People say, “Oh, I’d like to hear
him for half an hour or whatever it is.”

So, I’ve enjoyed doing that, it has been an important adjunct to my life.
It picks me up and keeps me creative when I’m not working. So in between,
I just schedule talks and go out and do them.
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